Fair Feather Friends

The sky is alive with birdsong.

Our group paused when Shalini, a 65-year-old birder who began birding at 17, pointed to a far off tree, “it’s a coucal!” In the shadows of leaves, we could see two large-ish, black birds hop from one branch to the other. “This bird is black with brick-red wings.” Visible through binoculars, the body of the bird became all too real. Coucals have long black tails, and are double the size of the common crow. Its wings lay on its body in two patches of brick-red: slightly brown and slightly red. The pair in the tree seemed to be playing. Beside the coucal, sitting small was a common kingfisher. It remained still; its body was a picture perfect outline of blue amongst the trees and construction work. Around us was Doddanekundi lake.

A group of about 15, we were there for the All Women’s Nature Walk’s (AWNW) monthly birding walk, held usually on Sunday mornings in parts of the city that are less crowded and with substantial foliage. Doddanekundi Lake is fabled for being one of the lakes lost to the city’s development. On this Sunday morning, this story remained quiet in the backdrop of the songs we could hear. Merlin, an exciting app to help the amateur identify birdsong, told us that it could hear the barbet, the kingfisher, the koyal, the ibis. It identified the cormorant and the drongo, but also missed the sonorous tit that we saw flying between trees.

After everyone introduced themselves at the start of the walk, Mittal Gala, the naturalist who began AWNW with a former colleague, began taking out binocular after binocular from a large backpack she carried. Like a birding genie, she made sure everyone had one, and then showed us newcomers how to use the binocs. “Look at the bird,” she said, “and don’t move your eyes. Then bring the binoculars and look at the same spot.” Voila, it worked!

Spot and learn

Mittal describes “how it was for newcomers, especially women” when she first started birdwatching. Birders have a habit of rattling off bird names at a stretch. The pelican, the coucal, the ashy prinia, the kingfisher, the ibis, the swamphen — names are called out as soon as someone spots the creature, and there’s little time to ask questions. After attending several such walks, they realised that they “want women to just come outdoors and explore and get introduced to nature, which mixed-gender walks do not offer. Especially for women, leisure is never imagined outside.”

Doddanekundi Lake has about four gates, each scattered along the three-kilometer perimeter of the lake. 500 meters in, we were joined by an older woman, Santhi, who lives nearby. Mittal hugged her as she reached and immediately asked, “Are we on the right track?” Santhi visits the lake daily and began birdwatching because of her son. As soon as she reassured Mittal, she took out her phone to show us her most recent birding pictures. One of them was of a pelican with a fish in its mouth.

“Side please!” Is often a common request to a group like this. As runners and regular fitness-lovers raced past us, we stayed in one spot to look through the scope that Mittal brought to the walk. Her colleague, Ananya R, set up the scope each time we came across a new species, which happened every five feet. The intention is for “[women to] get started out here and feel more comfortable to join other walks.” Mixed gender walks tend to be bigger in number. Asking questions is less easy, especially if they seem silly.

Owl the way

“The larger idea was just to get women outdoors and have fun in nature, make friendships,” because it can be just that easy. The group regularly broke up into smaller sections before becoming a bigger whole again. The moment each woman had her fill of the squadron of pelicans lounging in the lake, she walked ahead to see what the next-mini group was up to. In this way, we picked between the egrets or the swamphens or the sonorous tit. They were all glorious.

While the city’s regular (mixed-gender) birding communities “are filled with gentlemen,” as Shalini says, “there’s a kind of openness in this group that you don’t get to see otherwise. People ask so many questions here.” About halfway through, she remarks, “We didn’t see many insects today.”

Whether it’s birds or bees, there’s much to learn. Once you start paying attention, it’s difficult to stop. Each birdsong is a clarion call.

The details: Follow the All Women’s Nature Walk Instagram page for regular updates. Apart from their monthly Sunday morning walk, they share info about other nature-related events in the city too.

Drishti Rakhra is the Senior Editor at LURU.